Piper's Tale
by JHYW
Summary: One more gang try to escape the infection. Not too gory; I prefer to leave that to the imagination. Rated T mostly for casual swearing.


_My first fanfiction and the first story I've actually finished. Yay for me._

_I make presumptions, try to explain some things that aren't in the game (such as why none of the levels are set during the day) and there's a bit in the middle about Tanks that I hate. I rewrote it twice but the first version was the best. Ignore that part if you want to - it isn't relevant to the story._

_Critique harshly but truthfully, please._

_One last thing - I'm British, but this story is set in America, which is kind of stupid now that I think about it, so if I get slang completely wrong or use British figures-of-speech that don't make sense in America, I don't really care. Fuss over it on your own time.  
_

* * *

**18 days after first infection**

I awoke to the sounds of footsteps and whispering. 'This place is a mess. The house's been smashed to bits,' said a man's voice, gravelly and tired. I tried to sit up, but was totally pinned by fallen masonry. There were a few small gaps in my rubble prison, one conveniently over the right side of my face, and through one eye I saw four figures silhouetted against the street lamps, still following their automated timer and turning on at dark. A roving torch beam slid past my covering but its owner didn't notice me.

I tried to shift some of the masonry off me - the figures had almost finished giving the ruined building its check - but could barely move my arms, and the effort left me with a blinding headache. I could just about wriggle my foot from side to side, and the movement caused a cloud of plaster dust to billow up into the torchlight. The whispers stopped instantly, and there was the sound of several safety catches disengaging. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry and coated with dust so all I could manage was a croak, which only served to aggravate my potential rescuers further. 'Is it one of them?' A woman's voice this time. I licked my lips and tried again, this time managing something that might have sounded like, 'Help...'  
'It's a survivor! Someone's alive over here!' said a different man's voice, younger than the first man. There was the sound of shifting masonry, then the weights on various parts of my body were lifted and a torch shone in my face. I smiled weakly, then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The last dregs of daylight were filtering through the skeletal branches of the autumn trees when I woke up again. 'Finally. We've been waiting for a whole day. Lucky for you this area hasn't got too many infected or we'd have left you behind.' The first man's voice. I sat up and regretted it. 'First things first,' he continued. 'Name?'  
'Jacob Piper,' I said.  
'Were you on your own, or was there someone else in this house with you?'  
'Err... I was with my family, and the next-door neighbour. There were five of us – my parents, my sister, Georgina, and... Rex Grant, I think his name was. And myself, of course.' This made them sit up, and I looked at my rescuers properly for the first time. There was the man questioning me, in his mid-forties, greying at the temples but keeping himself in shape; he seemed in charge. There was a pair of identical twins, petite blonde women in their late twenties, with haggard faces and cold eyes. They were bucking the twins-stereotype and wearing different clothing – one was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, the other, a business suit minus the jacket. Finally, there was a thickset young man, still in his teens but with a worldly look in his eyes, which, like his companions', were looking at me with a mixture of relief, sympathy and puzzlement. All of them carried guns, assault rifles from the look of them (although I only recognised them from video games) except the boy, who rested a bloody baseball bat on his shoulder. One of the women spoke softly. 'We looked around what's left of the house, Jake, but there was no one else alive.'  
I just stared at her. Then – 'Alive? So...' The boy nodded, and then gestured towards a corner with his bat. Pulling myself up, I staggered forward to where he was pointing. I fell to my knees when I saw the two bodies; they were my Mum and Dad's. I started crying. 'If it's any consolation,' the boy was saying, 'the infected didn't get to them, before or after they died.'  
'It isn't,' I said. They stood in silence for a while, letting me get over the initial burst of grief. Eventually, after crying for what seemed like hours, I stood up and dried my eyes. 'Thank you. Is there anything we can do with them? To stop the infected getting them?'  
'The only thing we could do is burn the bodies,' replied the first man sombrely, 'but I don't think that there is enough wood around here, and we haven't got anything to cut it down with. I suppose we could bury them in the debris again.'  
'They lived in this house for fifteen years. I suppose they might like that.' I started trying to move the surrounding rubble towards my parents, but my headache flared up again and I nearly fell over. One of the twins, the one in jeans, ran to help me up.  
'Listen. I was a nurse before all this happened, and I think that you've got a concussion. That rest you had earlier would have helped a little, but no heavy lifting or strenuous activity for you for a while yet, okay?' I laughed mirthlessly.  
'Thanks for the advice, er...'  
'Angela,' she said, 'but I prefer Angie.'  
'Well, thanks for the advice, Angie, but I think that the rest of my life is going to be strenuous activity. Had you not noticed the zombies?' Looking around at the other three, who had started piling rubble around the bodies, I said, 'I don't know any of your names yet. Just yours, Angie.'  
'I'm Edward. Ed if you like,' said the older man. 'I was a…cop before all this.'  
'Toby Carver, high school football player,' added the teenager.  
'And I'm Connie, a lawyer' said the other twin, lastly. 'The one with the least useful skills out of all of us.'  
'Not anymore,' I said, smiling weakly. 'I've just finished college with a Bachelor's in English Language. Top that.' We chatted a bit about our previous lives while the three of them worked to bury my parents. As the talk turned to the present, I learned that they were heading towards a safe zone (actually _the _safe zone – the only one they had heard of. I knew nothing about it) about three hundred miles east of the city and decided to join them.

After a little while, Ed found a scoped rifle. 'Hey,' he called, 'What's this? You had guns?'  
'Yup. Rex brought them over when we hunkered down in our house. They're all his. I think there should be...' I ran over the list in my head and then out loud, 'Three more rifles like that one, a double-barrelled shotgun, two revolvers and three semi-automatic pistols, with over a hundred rounds for each, although I think we might have used most of them up during the last fortnight. I wondered why he had so many guns. Does that one still work?' Ed inspected the gun he was holding.  
'Nope. The barrel's bent out of position. Fixable, but none of us could do it. Still, we could do with some of those other guns.' They began to work more purposefully, and soon uncovered all but two of the weapons, a revolver and the shotgun still missing, and a sizeable amount of ammunition to go with them. Two of the four rifles were bent and unusable, but the other guns were fine, if a little scratched and dirty. My parents were now covered with a waist-high cairn, and using a marker that Toby had in his pocket, I wrote their names on the side. After getting permission to do some light work form Angie, I uncovered a wheeled suitcase with enough room inside to fit the guns and ammo. Shoving the remaining revolver and some bullets in my coat pocket and dragging the suitcase behind me, we set off, leaving my old house and my parents behind.

'So,' Toby said after we had gone a little way, 'what happened here yesterday?'  
'Actually, it was probably the day – or rather night – before. How long has it been since the first infection?'  
'Eighteenth day today,' answered Connie. 'Geez, has it only been eighteen days? Feels like it's been forever.' She looked older than she was, but I suppose we all did.  
'Eighteen. Then I was unconscious for one whole day before you found me.' I swiftly sorted out my jumbled memories. 'I'd finished college last term and had come home. During the summer I was looking for a job, and I'd found something good on the day of the first infection. My call back was two days later, and by then my interviewer had caught the virus, so that was me out of a job. Not that it matters, really. On my way home, I stopped to pick up some groceries, and some guy tried to take a bite out of me. I called security down on him, and when I went back there the next day the shop was closed – I assume all the staff were infected. On an impulse I broke in and took all of the non-perishable goods I could carry. That night we had our first attack. We were terrified. Rex saved us, and he moved in with us the next day, with all his guns. We had an attack every few days, but we barricaded the doors and windows and managed to hold out for about a fortnight.

'On the sixteenth night after the first infection, we had our biggest attack yet. We were shooting for at least an hour when what looked like an infected on steroids swatted the rest of them out the way and broke through our barricade in one punch. We retreated to the attic, out of his reach. This pissed him off, and he tore down the house with itself and us still inside. The last thing I remember is a loose pipe impaling the thing as three floors fell on its head.' I had rushed through my account in one breath, wanting to get it out in the open as quickly as possible. We walked along in silence for a while, and then Ed said quietly, 'The big ones are called Tanks. They're one of a number of "Special Infected."' He ran through them all quickly. 'Back to the Tanks, what you just described is one of the few ways they can actually be killed. Luckily for us survivors, they're pretty rare.' He lowered his voice, conspiratorial. 'Here's a little something you should remember about them. They spend most of their time just standing still – it takes a lot of energy to move a body that big, and they try to conserve it for as long as they can – but when they smell you, and they can smell like a shark, they go berserk. Crazy, like a bull to red. Their heart rate shoots right up; they burn all their energy reserves in minutes and fill with adrenaline. But if one stays like this for long enough, it will die from a heart attack, actually caused by the adrenaline. The Tank will kill itself. That's why they try to kill us as quickly as possible. Remember that. It's almost certain that you'll meet another one eventually.' I nodded, committing that fact to memory, and we carried on walking, into the city proper.

'Okay,' Ed said as we halted on the border between the suburbs and the city, 'this is a pretty big city, and you know what that means – thousands of infected running around wanting a bite out of us. It's not worth looking for survivors in a place this big – while there might be a higher chance of survival, anyone who did has either joined up and moved out or been eaten by now. We won't stop until we reach the other side, and we're moving as fast as we can.' The speech was mostly for my benefit, being the newcomer, but the last sentence made the others perk their ears up a bit. 'We're driving through town,' explained Ed, and Toby raised a hand. Ed nodded at him.  
'A car will have an alarm, and an alarm attracts the Horde. How're we getting around that?' In response, Ed took a scoped rifle out of my suitcase and shot three cars at the end of the road. Two had an alarm, and the siren call drew out all of the infected from their former homes to hammer on the wailing cars. While they were occupied, Ed smashed the window of the nearest car of which he liked the look, and was about to (try and) hotwire it when he noticed the keys still in the ignition. He shrugged and started the car. It was a big, family-sized car, with a boot big enough to fit luggage for a family of four. It was alarmed.

The few dozen infected who were close enough to go for our car rather than the others provided me with my first opportunity to see my companions in combat. It was obvious that they had been fighting from the start – they quickly mowed down the horde (or Horde, as I suppose I should call it), in various degrees of efficiency. Angie's face was a blank mask, but her hands were least steady on the gun and she was slow to pull the trigger; she shot most of her targets in the chest. Connie went in for quicker kills, trying for headshots mostly, but if any came too close she would shoot them in the legs and kick them away from her, to be trampled under the feet of the Horde. Her face was set in a cold grimace but her fingers were white from her tight grip on the gun. Toby favoured bodyshots with a semi-automatic pistol while the infected were at a distance, but as soon as they got close he dropped that in favour of his baseball bat. It was a strong, sturdy weapon, made of aluminium and carbon fibre (in happier times it would have cost a fortune, but I suspected that Toby had stolen it from a sports equipment shop now that money was obsolete) and Toby swung it with gusto and an expression on his quickly blood-spattered face that I hoped wasn't glee. Ed was calmest; he didn't say which section of the police force he used to be in, but I guessed that it was one that involved shooting people regularly. He didn't waste bullets – he put two shots into each target and then shot at another. The ones that he left merely injured were torn apart by the rest of the Horde. As for myself, I had taken a rifle out of the suitcase and stood on top of the car, firing at the infected at the back of the Horde, as far away from the others as I could aim and still hit some of the infected.

After the echoes of gunfire had rattled off the houses and Toby had made sure that none of the infected on the floor around us were still alive (a procedure that involved his bat and a short downward swing. I really didn't like him), we piled into the car. Ed was driving, I sat shotgun holding onto Ed's assault rifle, the twins strapped themselves into the backseats, and Toby braced himself in the boot, aiming two pistols out of the back window. We pulled out of the driveway and found the road that would take us straight through the city-centre as quickly as possible. We made good progress for about half an hour, going pretty fast, although the low drone of the engine brought some infected running at us. There was a messy incident involving a Boomer in the middle of the road, but it was nothing the windscreen wipers couldn't handle. Suddenly, a wall loomed across the road in front of us. 'Fuck!' yelled Ed, slamming on the brakes and twisting the wheel. There was a high-pitched squeal of brakes and the car screamed to a stop, about a foot from the wall. Now that we were closer, I could see that the wall was made out of timber, rubble and chicken wire snapped at the top to prevent anyone climbing over. Several of the prongs were bent backwards.

'It must have been built by some survivors,' decided Angie, getting out of the car and rubbing her head. We were all a bit shaken up, but Toby, having no restraints in the boot, had gotten the worst of it. He had been flung about and had smacked his head against the window, splitting the skin above his left eye. The wound was bleeding a fair amount, but it wasn't serious and Angie patched him up without too much trouble. While she was tending to him, the rest of us investigated the barricade. Walking around, we found that the wall formed the perimeter of a rough circle. 'Looks professional,' I commented, giving the wall a shove. 'Look, it didn't shift at all. Someone knew what they were doing when they made this.'  
Ed just grunted, 'There's got to be something inside. Anyone found an entrance yet?'  
'It's over here,' called Connie from the other side of the compound. It was a hatch made of steel, opening upwards and outwards and disguised to look like the nearest part of the wall, enough to fool the infected but obvious enough for any survivor to find it without too much trouble.  
'We've made so much noise – anybody inside must know that we're out here. Still…' I knocked heavily on the hatch. No response came, but the hatch swung creakily on its single hinge. 'That doesn't look too good,' said Connie apprehensively. She and I released our safeties, positioned ourselves in front of the hatch and nodded. Ed swung the hatch upwards, pressing himself against the wall. Five infected came running out at us and were killed instantly. The room was otherwise empty.

We still advanced cautiously, and were assaulted with the metallic stench of iron. Every surface was sticky with dried blood; bloody knives and blunt weapons littered the concrete. A dying torch sat next to an open book on the single table, pointing at the other side of the room. Six shell casings lay next to the entrance. 'We're too late,' I said, stating the obvious. No one else said anything until Ed walked over to the book.  
'It's a diary,' he said.  
'How cliché,' I muttered, as he prepared to read. Before he could start, we heard Angie yell, 'Guys, get out here. Now!' We got out there.

It was chaos outside. The high-pitched brake-squeal had woken up every infected for miles, and the smell of fresh blood had drawn them to our location. Both Angie and Toby stood on top of the car, trying to fend off the hundreds of infected who were ripping the car to shreds in order to get to them. A wall of lead pushed them back long enough for the two to join us in a staggered retreat along the road. They were both covered in blood from the waist down – thankfully not their own – and steaming with anger. 'How could you just run off and leave us?' Angie yelled. The shelter we had just left served to break up the Horde, making the fight a little easier on us.  
'Well, you were helping Toby, and-' I began.  
'Toby's cut took less than a minute to patch up.'  
'Then why didn't you join us inside afterwards?' I retorted.  
The argument was about to turn into a full-blown fight when Ed interrupted, 'If Angie and Toby had joined us inside the compound, he would still have brought the Horde to us and we would have been trapped inside and died like the previous occupants. By leaving you outside, we have all escaped alive. Happy? We can't afford to fight amongst ourselves.' He punctuated his small speech with bursts from his assault rifle, and for a while no one spoke. Then a Hunter screamed and landed on a car, blowing out the windows and setting off its alarm.

The Special Infected was dressed in combats and a camouflage jacket, and looked about nineteen. Its appearance made Toby smile, as another dozen infected ran out and mingled with our Horde. 'This one's mine,' he said, and adopted a classic batting stance. Give it up Toby, you're never going to make the hit,' Connie said, and I looked to her for an answer. She explained: 'Toby and I have a bet going. If he can hit a home run with a Hunter, I'll-' The Hunter interrupted her, screaming and leaping directly at Toby. He stood his ground, shifted his grip, and swung his bat – a fraction too slow. The Hunter collided with him at the same time the bat smacked into its side and knocked it out of its trajectory. The two were knocked over and rolled over and over until they came to rest, the Hunter on top straddling Toby and beating the crap out of him. 'Every time,' Ed sighed, knocking the Special infected off Toby and stomping on its neck. 'Don't do that again.' We eventually took out the rest of the Horde, then ran back to check on the car. It was ruined: the windows smashed, the bodywork ripped off and the engine taken apart.  
'We're gonna need a new car,' I commented dryly.  
'Now's the time to get one,' added Connie. 'Judging from the size of that Horde, we just killed every infected for at least a mile around. It'll be some time before any more find us.' We all breathed a short sigh of relief, except for Ed.  
'And where are we getting this car from?' he pointed out. We looked around. For a main road, there were surprisingly few cars left abandoned on the street; none in fact, apart from the one the Hunter had landed on, and that now had no windows and a severely dented roof.  
'I can't believe there are no cars!' said Toby incredulously. 'It's a main road isn't it? It should be packed with abandoned cars!'  
'I guess that when the infection started getting really bad, everybody stayed home with their families. There will be loads of cars in the residential parts of town, but none in the work-central middle,' Angie explained  
'That makes sense,' admitted Toby grudgingly, but grumbled to himself for some time afterwards.  
'No guesswork is gonna get us a car,' said Ed, 'Let's walk.' And we did, for another hour. By then, we had walked (almost) unmolested through the very centre of the city, following the road and not daring to chance the alleys between buildings. Eventually, we saw something that made my blood run cold.

Thousands of infected. Hundreds of thousands. Just standing in the road, doing nothing, apart from those who were fighting each other. It was as if the entire population of the city had congregated on the tarmac. Luckily, we were downwind, and we smelt them before they smelt us.  
'Fuck,' I said eloquently, 'now what are we going to do?'  
'We've definitely got to get out of the city,' replied Angie.  
'Well, duh. How?' Toby was more eloquent than I was.  
'Y'know, it really is rare to see a Horde of that size,' Connie was mostly musing to herself, 'and if we could take them out…'  
'What would be the point?' I asked, 'As long as we don't disturb them, all they'll do is stand around. For years, unless they're hungry. They won't actively seek us out unless they can smell us, so they won't pose a threat to anyone unless they enter the city, and if someone does, it's on their own head.' I surprised myself with that cold sentence, but we were all thinking the same thing. We were silent for a while, sat on the steps of a building. Finally Angie spoke. She was looking at the infected through the scope on one of the rifles. 'There's no way we can go through that crowd. I'm pretty sure I can see a Tank somewhere in there too.'  
'You're right. We'll have to go around them,' Ed replied. 'Through the alleys. Move out, people.' We hurried down an alley on the left as the wind picked up, bringing a sudden chill and with it, the smells and noises of thousands of infected.

We carried on in a line for a few blocks, trying to get as far away from the massive Horde as possible before we left the city. Any infected we encountered were dealt with quickly and quietly; not one bullet was fired for fear it might alert the Horde. We stopped only once, after Toby had been struck out by another Hunter, still trying to win his bet with Connie. We had reached another large road when we heard a woman sobbing somewhere close by.  
'Is that a Witch?' I whispered to Ed.  
'I think so. Sometimes it's hard to tell,' he answered, and motioned for silence and darkness. Out on the open streets, a full moon shone big and bright though the cloudless sky, making torches unnecessary anyway. We hurried on more cautiously, wary of stumbling upon the source of the crying. It had increased in volume five minutes later when it cut out suddenly, broken by a scream of rage. We threw caution to the winds and ran blindly through the next alleys, but there was no sign of the red eyes that burned through the darkness like a demon's might.  
'She must have been startled by an infected,' panted Toby between breaths.  
'I doubt it. Everything instinctively stays away from the Witch. Even Tanks are afraid of them,' Connie countered. 'It must have… Oh God, it must have been another survivor.'

We gave our fallen faceless comrade a moment's silence. I imagine the other four were thinking of all of those they had lost to the infected and the infection. As for myself, I was wondering about the three people still unaccounted for – my sister, Rex, and the gunner from the shelter in the middle of the road. Was it one of them who had just incurred the wrath of the Witch? Understandably selfish, I hoped it was anyone but my sister, but there was no way of knowing. Certainly we weren't going to find the Witch just so we could see whom we couldn't save. It was only after we'd finished our respectful silence that we realised that we were totally lost. Perhaps worse than that, I had dropped the suitcase with our guns and ammunition.

We had been so intent on escaping the Witch that we'd blundered into a maze of alleyways and hidden roads, the likes of which you can only find on survival-horror video games. Ed had a compass, but after following it in as straight a line we could keep through these twisting back streets and eventually ending up back where we started, he pocketed it in disgust. Having foregone the compass, we made our way through the alleys by instinct; we could always find our heading once we'd escaped the maze. We couldn't go back for the suitcase even if we'd wanted to, but the loss of the extra weight allowed us to make better progress than we had done all night, barring our short ride in the car.

We'd been walking for a little more than an hour when we halted for a break. We'd sensed that we were close to finding a way out of the alleys, but every potential exit we came across was blocked by rubble, a ridiculously sized Horde, or in one unlucky case, a Witch, mournfully singing her song. She'd looked up and snarled when Ed nearly walked into her, the telltale sobbing having been muffled by the surrounding buildings. Ed backed away quickly and she seemed content with that, to our relief. We'd found at least a dozen dead ends, some at the end of extremely convoluted and linear paths, forcing us to backtrack extensively. More than once, I muttered to myself, 'This is poor building planning,' as we turned a corner to find yet another alleyway stretching in front of us. We'd fought through at least four Hordes; at one point a Smoker snared Connie, who was on rearguard.

The area we'd stopped in looked like a clearing in the forest of bricks and mortar, as strange as it sounds. There were four openings, each to a point of the compass. In this slightly more open area, we could see the sky beginning to lighten through the eastern passageway.  
'We've got to get out of here. Quickly.' Ed's voice was low and urgent.  
'Why?' The others were nodding but still the rookie, I was perplexed.  
'You don't know? The infected get angry during the day,' answered Toby.  
'Angrier, you mean.'  
'Whatever,' Toby shrugged. 'They get meaner and more determined while the Sun's up.'  
'That's weird. Why-'  
'Right at the start, we met up with a virologist and he guessed that the virus reacts badly to UV rays or vitamin D or something in sunlight. I thought it might be 'cause it makes their eyes more sensitive or something. Basically, we don't know why, but sunlight makes them worse,' Connie interjected shortly. She wanted to get moving and Ed agreed. We chose the west-facing alley and rushed through it until another large Horde blocked our path, and after we had dealt with that we had to contend with a pile of bodies in our way, and even after that it turned out the opening had been plugged with a huge, full-to-the-brim dumpster which we found impossible to move and so backtracked to the clearing. By this time the Sun had fully risen over the city's canopy, its yellow smile beaming weakly through the early morning mist that rose to greet the first of the Sun's rays. That quickly evaporated, the scant protection it had provided for the thousands of infected eyes in this city vanishing completely in the blink of an eye. In that instant, thousands of infected throats lifted to the sky and let loose a hideous, unearthly scream of pain. We felt the low rumble of thousands of infected feet running all at once, and I knew that thousands of infected were hurtling towards us, desperate to take out their pain on someone else.

We took the northward path and ran, the closest infected already on our heels. A second shriek followed us, and we looked up just in time to see a Hunter, and advance scout for the infected army on our tails, fly overhead. It landed about a hundred yards in front on a thick ventilation pipe connecting the top floors of the buildings to the sides, denting it, and clung impossibly to the flat surface perpendicular to the ground five storeys below. It just hung there for a moment or too with a look on its face that was faintly reminiscent of a diner spoilt for choice by a packed menu, but before any of us had the sense to shoot it down, it made its choice and leapt screaming at me.

'Duck!' Toby was standing behind me. He muttered, 'Batter up,' and then swung as hard as he could. He connected with the side of the Hunter's head and sent it tumbling end over end until it smacked headfirst into a wall. 'Who's the man?' crowed Toby, turning towards Connie. 'Told you I could do it. You owe me a-' I never found out what Connie owed Toby, because at that moment a Smoker's tongue wrapped tightly around his body. As it hoisted him off the ground, the coil around Toby's throat took most of his weight and I heard his neck snap. 'Toby!' I snapped up my rifle and shot the smoker off the building, but it was too late to save him. There was nothing we could do for him – The Horde was attacking from the front and somewhere close by, we could hear the roar of a Tank. We turned back to the clearing and by an unspoken agreement, we split up and ran in different direction, Ed and Connie turning right to take the eastward route and Angie and I staying south. We were running as fast as we could, tearing through a thin Horde like they were tissue paper when I heard the other two scream and Angie began to run in the opposite direction, back to the clearing. Battling indecision for a second, I turned around and sped after her. I quickly saw the cause of the screams.

Connie and Ed had picked the short straw, running down the alley and into the Tank. It had chased Connie and had sent her flying into the sturdy metal side of a dumpster. I darkly hoped the impact had killed her, as the Tank was beating what was left into a bloody pulp, seemingly impervious to the constant stream of fire coming from Ed's assault rifle. Angie screamed in rage and sorrow, pulled out her handgun, stole a grenade from Ed's pocket, and jumped on the monster's back, holding on with her knees and constantly firing into its skull as she struggled to remove the safety pin, screaming all the while. The creature's massive arms, such effective weapons for destruction, were so thick with muscle that it couldn't reach around to pull the distraction from its back, no matter how hard it tried. Too soon, a grenade exploded very close to the back of its head, wrenching apart its mutated bones and brains as if they were no different from those that had belonged to Angie and now painted the walls. I caught up with Ed and watched this gruesome spectacle in horror. 'That's it then,' Ed said quietly. 'It's over. We're all dead.' He sank to his knees, dropped his assault rifle with a clatter to the concrete and bowed his head. I shook mine and tried to pull him up.  
'No, Ed, it's not over. We're still alive, right? We have to make it out of the city as fast as we can. We have to survive. The others gave their lives to protect us, and we have to make sure their deaths weren't in vain. Come on.' I tugged on his arm, and he stood slowly.  
'You're right. Let's go.' He took two steps, and then stopped and flashed me a mad, desperate grin. He began to laugh crazily and fell to his knees again, consumed by the insane hysterical laughter, and I knew that if he didn't snap out of it soon, we would both be dead. He was already drawing the infected out of the stunned trance they'd fallen into after the explosion. I cut them down, hoping perhaps that the sound of gunfire might bring him out of shock. I slapped his check, splashed his face with water from my flask, did everything I could think of to get him to move, but just sat there, alternately giggling and guffawing, and in the near distance I could hear the whoops and yells of another Horde coming away. I stayed for as long as I dared, but then, as scores of shadows danced up the far wall, I ran, leaving Ed to the mercy of the infected. I did not look back.

* * *

_Personally I think the middle is a bit weak, the part which had the least planning and rewriting, which only goes to show. I think I might have a writing style that is too formal for stories set in the modern day, and is more suited to medieval-based fantasy, but I don't know. What do you think?_

_The next one is in the works; it's about the first case of the infection and will be called Patient Zero. Don't expect it too soon - I don't write that fast, especially when I'm concentrating on something else. Right now I'm foiling an alien invasion in Washington D.C., and I recently recieved one hundred classic novels for my birthday, plus I'm on holiday as of next week without access to the internet. I'll still make progress, though, in dribs and drabs._


End file.
